My favorite camera settings for great phone videos. just don’t abuse it

At a recent family function, my dad demonstrated a series of videos recorded during his recent trip to Las Vegas. One scene in particular, panning from casino to casino as he was walking through the strip, caught most of the audience’s attention. The motion was noticeably smoother than in other clips he captured, making the neon-lit signs at every corner that much more legible.

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He was just as surprised as the rest of us; Either his hands were secretly made of steel or his nearly four year old iPhone 11 still had it.

It was probably the latter (sorry, Dad), as it was clear to the trained eye that the video was recorded at 60 frames per second (fps). FPS refers to the number of times your camera captures frames in one second.

Do you remember those flip books that used to produce animation when the pages were turned? You can think of the camera recording at 60fps as a flip book with 60 pages. The more pages, the smoother the visuals.

By default, smartphones record at 30fps, which is still more than enough for your everyday video making. In fact, most movies and digital content are captured in 24fps or 30fps. Naturally, the car chase scenes and camera shake look a lot more dramatic.

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But if you want the best videos possible, especially if your smartphone camera is your only piece of equipment, here’s how to dial that up to 60.

How to change your phone’s video-recording settings

It wasn’t until recent years that Apple finally moved the iPhone’s camera settings to the Camera app itself, making it much easier to change things like FPS. For this reason I suspect my dad inadvertently switched from 30fps to 60fps when recording his videos.

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To change the FPS setting, you must first switch from picture mode to Video mode, either by swiping up on the carousel at the bottom or by tapping the label. Then, in the upper right corner, tap the middle 30 And 60 To adjust the number of frames captured per second.

For even more clarity, you can switch from recording to HD (1080p resolution) 4K By tapping that label as well.

Why shouldn’t you always record at 60fps?

There is one major caveat that you should be aware of when recording at 60fps instead of 30fps, and that is the file size. Since your phone is capturing double the number of frames, 60fps videos take up more storage, and there’s often a recording time limit if you ramp up to 4K.

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So, if you’re limited on internal memory or cloud storage, or don’t plan on backing up footage to an external drive, I’d recommend being more protective (and careful) when recording video at higher frame rates.